World War II in the Eastern Mediterranean and Balkans. You will find a wide range of political and social views in these articles. This website does not support any 'isms or 'ists! It is solely for educational purposes.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

As the Germans had feared, the British began landing soldiers and
aircraft in southern Greece as early as November 1940. Had Mussolini
delivered on his claim that he would stroll into Athens within a month,
then the Balkans (with the exception of Greece) would probably have
remained an island of peace for most of the war. But with the planned
invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler could not afford to have his rear
threatened by British forces. Mussolini’s failure to subjugate Greece
provoked the Nazi military sweep through the Balkans.

Mussolini was able to pay Hitler back ‘in his own coin’ at their
summit meeting in Florence on 28 October, the day of the attack on
Greece. Far from admonishing Mussolini, as il Duce had expected, Hitler
congratulated him briefly and advised him to concentrate on grabbing
Crete. Mussolini ignored the advice. Although he did not know it, his
casual announcement of the invasion had not taken Hitler by surprise.
The Führer’s information-gathering network was too good for that. On
receiving the same intelligence, Ernst von Weizsäcker, Undersecretary of
State at the Außenamt, ‘set about making a very clear demarche. I drew
up an unambiguous instruction to Rome that we should not allow our ally,
who was weak enough in any case, to bring new countries into the war
without our advice and consent as allies. Ribbentrop approved this, but
Hitler said he did not want to cross Mussolini. Hitler’s silence meant
indirectly giving Italy the sign to go ahead with her . . . step in the
Balkans.’

Hitler even offered Mussolini paratroop support for an operation
against Crete. ‘People are too prone to think of the Mediterranean as an
east–west channel for shipping’, observed ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, the head
of America’s intelligence service, the OSS, in a memo to Roosevelt sent
from the Balkans a month after the Italian offensive had begun. ‘It
should be thought of primarily as a no-man’s land between Europe and
Africa, with two great forces facing each other from the north and the
south. Germany controls, either directly or indirectly, most of the
northern battle-line on the continent of Europe. It is imperative for
the British – or the British and the Americans – to control the southern
front along the Mediterranean shore of Africa.’ Donovan had not quite
read Hitler’s mind, but it was a passable summary of what the Führer was
thinking.

Hitler could have blocked the Italian invasion of Greece but did not.
First, he wanted to prevent Britain from establishing an airbase in
Thessaloniki from which British bombers could reach the oil fields in
Ploeşti. But he had a still grander reason. Operation ‘Seelöwe’, the
invasion of Britain, had failed, and Hitler had dropped the idea of a
second attempt. He had switched instead to the so-called ‘peripheral
strategy’ which involved cutting communications between Great Britain
and its imperial outposts. At the time of the Italian invasion, Hitler
was planning an assault on Gibraltar and a push, with the Italians,
towards Suez. If Germany and Italy could seize Crete, then they would
control the main naval and aerial staging post in the Mediterranean.
They could monitor and regulate traffic along an east–west and a
north–south axis. Hitler accepted and even supported Italy’s Greek
operation within the context of the ‘peripheral strategy’ against
England. But his modest enthusiasm for the offensive soon soured when he
realized it had been planned and executed by a clown. The British
occupied Crete on 6 November while the Italians were still bogged down
in the mud of Epirus just 24 kilometres from their base camp. ‘A
matchless dilettantism’, fulminated Goebbels in December when the extent
of Italy’s failure became clear.

The Italians have ruined the military prestige of the Axis. This is
why the Balkans have become such a stubborn problem . . . So we must now
intervene. Not to help them but to run the English out of Crete where
they have installed themselves. They must get out of there. The Führer
would prefer to see a peace deal between Rome and Athens but it is a
difficult policy to sell. Mussolini has really messed this one up . . .
If only he had occupied Crete straight away as the Führer had advised.
But Rome is incorrigible.

By this time, Germany’s need to intervene in the Balkans had become
still more pressing. Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet Foreign Minister,
arrived in Berlin on the afternoon of 12 November 1940 for two days of
talks. Hitler wished to invite the Soviet Union to join Germany, Italy
and Japan in the Tripartite Pact. Were Stalin to accept the offer to
join the Axis, this would create the mightiest political alliance in
history, stretching from the Atlantic and Mediterranean to the Pacific.
Hitler had hit upon the idea of incorporating the Soviet Union into his
scheme partly to pre-empt a future alliance of the Soviet Union, Britain
and, possibly, the United States, and partly because he had become
anxious about the gradual westward expansion of the Soviet Union through
Finland, the Baltics, Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. In the
Molotov–Ribbentrop accord of August 1939, Hitler had effectively
recognized the Balkans as a Russian sphere of interest. Meanwhile,
however, Germany’s interest in the region had become more urgent. By
persuading the Soviet Union to sign up to the Tripartite Pact, Hitler
hoped, among other things, to extinguish Soviet influence in the
Balkans. Berlin offered to compensate Moscow by supporting Soviet
expansion in what Hitler termed the ‘Großasiatischer Raum’ (greater
Asian space). When Molotov asked what ‘Großasiatischer Raum’ actually
meant, the Germans were unable to give him a concrete answer; it has
been assumed that it meant India, Central Asia and Iran.

As Hitler unveiled his vision of the new order, covering half the
globe, Molotov sat impassively and, having heard the Führer out, stated
he agreed ‘in principle’ to the idea. He then proceeded to raise
difficulties about all the individual issues that Hitler had hoped to
resolve in Germany’s favour. The Foreign Minister mentioned Finland,
Poland and Romania but he also raised for the first time the question of
Bulgaria. Molotov claimed that Britain was threatening the security of
the Black Sea Straits, which had prompted the Soviet Union to consider
an offer ‘of a Russian guarantee to Bulgaria’.

Molotov’s intervention threatened Wehrmacht plans to invade Greece,
which included sending its divisions through Bulgaria. Stalin’s response
to the Tripartite proposal arrived by letter two weeks after Molotov’s
visit. The Soviet leader was adamant on the issue of Bulgaria: ‘2.
Provided that within the next few months the security of the Soviet
Union in the Straits is assured by the conclusion of a mutual assistance
pact between the Soviet Union and Bulgaria . . . and by the
establishment of a base for land and naval forces of the USSR within
range of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles by means of a long-term lease.’

Hitler needed the Balkans for economic reasons. He could not tolerate
Soviet interference in the region, and certainly not a Soviet military
presence there. Persuaded that Stalin was becoming too conceited and
dangerous as an ally, Hitler decided to destroy the Soviet Union once
and for all. The great gamble was begun.

This momentous decision . . . had immediate and far-reaching
consequences. Firstly, the war against Britain now turned into a
secondary matter, and the ‘peripheral strategy’ was therefore eliminated
at a stroke. Secondly, the mess created by Italy’s failure in Greece
turned from a secondary nuisance within the framework of the ‘peripheral
strategy’ (and not wholly unqualified, as it had presented the Germans
with the opportunity to install themselves in the eastern Mediterranean
while circumventing Italian objections) into a first-class blunder from
the point of view of the future war against Russia.

After Greece’s seizure of Korçe, an optimistic editorial in the New
York Times suggested that ‘it probably needs only a comparatively small
number of British divisions with accompanying artillery, tanks and
airplanes to bring it [victory over the Italians and control of the
northern Mediterranean] to fulfillment. But where are the divisions and
whence are they coming? Is British land armament and trained man power
yet sufficient to spare enough for this providential chance? If the
answer is affirmative, this may prove to be a turning point of the war.’
The answer was negative; it was a turning point nonetheless.

Thursday, August 4, 2016

In Bulgaria's muggy capital of Sofia during August 1939 Tsar Boris III thought about his future and that of his Balkan nation. Bulgaria is small and weak; how do we stay independent? How does Bulgaria recover territories lost earlier in the century? And how do I stay in power?

Last January, MHN.com published an article about a series of battles from history that were fought the opposing sides had already agreed to suspend hostilities. The piece included such dust ups as the Battle of New Orleans, which was waged between British redcoats and American troops in January 1815 - two weeks after the signing of the Treaty of Ghent.

Friday, March 11, 2016

As the Germans had feared, the British began landing
soldiers and aircraft in southern Greece as early as November 1940. Had
Mussolini delivered on his claim that he would stroll into Athens within a
month, then the Balkans (with the exception of Greece) would probably have
remained an island of peace for most of the war. But with the planned invasion
of the Soviet Union, Hitler could not afford to have his rear threatened by
British forces. Mussolini’s failure to subjugate Greece provoked the Nazi
military sweep through the Balkans.

Mussolini was able to pay Hitler back ‘in his own coin’ at
their summit meeting in Florence on 28 October, the day of the attack on
Greece. Far from admonishing Mussolini, as il Duce had expected, Hitler
congratulated him briefly and advised him to concentrate on grabbing Crete.
Mussolini ignored the advice. Although he did not know it, his casual
announcement of the invasion had not taken Hitler by surprise. The Führer’s
information-gathering network was too good for that. On receiving the same
intelligence, Ernst von Weizsäcker, Undersecretary of State at the Außenamt,
‘set about making a very clear demarche. I drew up an unambiguous instruction
to Rome that we should not allow our ally, who was weak enough in any case, to
bring new countries into the war without our advice and consent as allies.
Ribbentrop approved this, but Hitler said he did not want to cross Mussolini.

Hitler’s silence meant indirectly giving Italy the sign to go ahead with
her . . . step in the Balkans.’

Hitler even offered Mussolini paratroop support for an
operation against Crete. ‘People are too prone to think of the Mediterranean as
an east–west channel for shipping’, observed ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, the head of
America’s intelligence service, the OSS, in a memo to Roosevelt sent from the
Balkans a month after the Italian offensive had begun. ‘It should be thought of
primarily as a no-man’s land between Europe and Africa, with two great forces
facing each other from the north and the south. Germany controls, either
directly or indirectly, most of the northern battle-line on the continent of
Europe. It is imperative for the British – or the British and the
Americans – to control the southern front along the Mediterranean shore of
Africa.’ Donovan had not quite read Hitler’s mind, but it was a passable
summary of what the Führer was thinking.

Hitler could have blocked the Italian invasion of Greece but
did not. First, he wanted to prevent Britain from establishing an airbase in
Thessaloniki from which British bombers could reach the oil fields in Ploeşti.
But he had a still grander reason. Operation ‘Seelöwe’, the invasion of
Britain, had failed, and Hitler had dropped the idea of a second attempt. He
had switched instead to the so-called ‘peripheral strategy’ which involved
cutting communications between Great Britain and its imperial outposts. At the
time of the Italian invasion, Hitler was planning an assault on Gibraltar and a
push, with the Italians, towards Suez. If Germany and Italy could seize Crete,
then they would control the main naval and aerial staging post in the
Mediterranean. They could monitor and regulate traffic along an east–west and a
north–south axis. Hitler accepted and even supported Italy’s Greek operation
within the context of the ‘peripheral strategy’ against England. But his modest
enthusiasm for the offensive soon soured when he realized it had been planned
and executed by a clown. The British occupied Crete on 6 November while the
Italians were still bogged down in the mud of Epirus just 24 kilometres from
their base camp. ‘A matchless dilettantism’, fulminated Goebbels in December
when the extent of Italy’s failure became clear.

The Italians have ruined the military prestige of the Axis.
This is why the Balkans have become such a stubborn
problem . . . So we must now intervene. Not to help them but to
run the English out of Crete where they have installed themselves. They must
get out of there. The Führer would prefer to see a peace deal between Rome and
Athens but it is a difficult policy to sell. Mussolini has really messed this
one up . . . If only he had occupied Crete straight away as the
Führer had advised. But Rome is incorrigible.

By this time, Germany’s need to intervene in the Balkans had
become still more pressing. Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet Foreign Minister,
arrived in Berlin on the afternoon of 12 November 1940 for two days of talks.
Hitler wished to invite the Soviet Union to join Germany, Italy and Japan in
the Tripartite Pact. Were Stalin to accept the offer to join the Axis, this
would create the mightiest political alliance in history, stretching from the
Atlantic and Mediterranean to the Pacific. Hitler had hit upon the idea of
incorporating the Soviet Union into his scheme partly to pre-empt a future
alliance of the Soviet Union, Britain and, possibly, the United States, and
partly because he had become anxious about the gradual westward expansion of
the Soviet Union through Finland, the Baltics, Bessarabia and northern
Bukovina. In the Molotov–Ribbentrop accord of August 1939, Hitler had
effectively recognized the Balkans as a Russian sphere of interest. Meanwhile,
however, Germany’s interest in the region had become more urgent. By persuading
the Soviet Union to sign up to the Tripartite Pact, Hitler hoped, among other
things, to extinguish Soviet influence in the Balkans.

Berlin offered to
compensate Moscow by supporting Soviet expansion in what Hitler termed the
‘Großasiatischer Raum’ (greater Asian space). When Molotov asked what
‘Großasiatischer Raum’ actually meant, the Germans were unable to give him a
concrete answer; it has been assumed that it meant India, Central Asia and
Iran.

As Hitler unveiled his vision of the new order, covering
half the globe, Molotov sat impassively and, having heard the Führer out,
stated he agreed ‘in principle’ to the idea. He then proceeded to raise
difficulties about all the individual issues that Hitler had hoped to resolve
in Germany’s favour. The Foreign Minister mentioned Finland, Poland and Romania
but he also raised for the first time the question of Bulgaria. Molotov claimed
that Britain was threatening the security of the Black Sea Straits, which had
prompted the Soviet Union to consider an offer ‘of a Russian guarantee to
Bulgaria’.

Molotov’s intervention threatened Wehrmacht plans to invade
Greece, which included sending its divisions through Bulgaria. Stalin’s
response to the Tripartite proposal arrived by letter two weeks after Molotov’s
visit. The Soviet leader was adamant on the issue of Bulgaria: ‘2. Provided
that within the next few months the security of the Soviet Union in the Straits
is assured by the conclusion of a mutual assistance pact between the Soviet
Union and Bulgaria . . . and by the establishment of a base for
land and naval forces of the USSR within range of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles
by means of a long-term lease.’

Hitler needed the Balkans for economic reasons. He could not
tolerate Soviet interference in the region, and certainly not a Soviet military
presence there. Persuaded that Stalin was becoming too conceited and dangerous
as an ally, Hitler decided to destroy the Soviet Union once and for all. The
great gamble was begun.

This momentous decision . . . had immediate
and far-reaching consequences. Firstly, the war against Britain now turned into
a secondary matter, and the ‘peripheral strategy’ was therefore eliminated at a
stroke. Secondly, the mess created by Italy’s failure in Greece turned from a
secondary nuisance within the framework of the ‘peripheral strategy’ (and not
wholly unqualified, as it had presented the Germans with the opportunity to
install themselves in the eastern Mediterranean while circumventing Italian
objections) into a first-class blunder from the point of view of the future war
against Russia.

After Greece’s seizure of Korçe, an optimistic editorial in
the New York Times suggested that ‘it probably needs only a comparatively small
number of British divisions with accompanying artillery, tanks and airplanes to
bring it [victory over the Italians and control of the northern Mediterranean]
to fulfillment. But where are the divisions and whence are they coming? Is
British land armament and trained man power yet sufficient to spare enough for
this providential chance? If the answer is affirmative, this may prove to be a
turning point of the war.’ The answer was negative; it was a turning point
nonetheless.

Signor Emanuele Grazzi was tired and worried. Motoring along
the empty road from Athens to Kifissia with the military attaché, Colonel Luigi
Mondini, he was briefly cheered by the clear sky, which was, remembers Mondini,
‘dotted with the myriads of stars that make the sky of Attica so marvellous’.
It was a quarter to three in the morning on 28 October 1940, in southern
Greece’s Indian summer. The piece of paper Grazzi was about to deliver to the
Greek dictator, General Ioannis Metaxas, would bring that late summer mood to
an end. The sentry at Metaxas’s modest two-storey house mistook the Italian
flag on Grazzi’s car for the tricolour. Metaxas had been told that the French
consul wished to see him urgently and so, half-asleep, he was baffled to see
the Italian minister instead. Still somewhat bemused, Metaxas ushered Grazzi
into a sitting room furnished in the dictator’s unassuming lower-middle-class
style. He offered his visitor a seat on the green divan in front of a large
desk, and apologized for the fact that he had not yet changed out of his
nightshirt and dressing gown. Outside the door, Metaxas’s wife, Lela, listened
quietly. ‘Their conversation began calmly’, she wrote later, ‘but soon I heard
an animated exchange, and an angry tone in my husband’s voice followed by a
loud bang of the palm of his hand on top of the desk. This was the exact moment
of the Οχι! [No!] which was followed by Grazzi’s departure.’ In his memoirs,
the Italian does not recall Metaxas’s becoming overexcited, nor does he
remember the Prime Minister banging the table and shouting ‘No!’ Whether true
or not, the rumour became fact throughout Greece within a matter of days –
the Οχι War had begun.

Grazzi’s embarrassment was genuine. A hard worker and an
admirer of Greece, his attempts to calm the troubled waters of Greco–Italian
relations made no impact whatsoever on his boss, Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italy’s
whimsically irresponsible Foreign Minister. Even if Metaxas had so desired, the
ultimatum had been worded so as to preclude Greece’s capitulation to the
Italians. Benito Mussolini was set on invading and occupying Greece, not
because this might be of any strategic value to Italy but, as Ciano reported,
because the Italian dictator was furious with Hitler. Without telling Mussolini
before the event (not for the first time), the Führer announced on 11 October
that the Luftwaffe had assumed control of the Ploeşti oil fields ‘in accordance
with the Romanian request’. Ciano saw a blustering Mussolini that day: ‘He says
that this has impressed Italian public opinion very deeply’, Ciano wrote,
quoting Mussolini as saying, ‘“Hitler always faces me with a fait accompli.
This time I am going to pay him back in his own coin. He will find out from the
papers that I have occupied Greece. In this way the equilibrium will be
re-established.”’

Hitler’s consistent refusal to inform Mussolini of any major
operations he was planning wounded the Italian’s excessive pride, and it was
thus in a fit of pique that Mussolini decided on the invasion of Greece,
allowing a mere two weeks for preparations. Ciano backed his leader
enthusiastically although he was alarmed to note that the three heads of the General Staff have unanimously pronounced
themselves against it. The present forces are insufficient, and the Navy does
not feel that it can carry out a landing at Prevesa [in northern Greece]
because the water is too shallow . . .

Badoglio foresees the
prolongation of the war, and with it the exhaustion of our already-meagre
resources. I listen, and do not argue. I insist that, from a political point of
view, the moment is good. Greece is isolated. Turkey will not move. Neither
will Yugoslavia. If the Bulgarians enter the war it will be on our side. From
the military point of view I express no opinion. Badoglio must, without any
hesitation, repeat to Mussolini what he has told me.

Notwithstanding his habitual tendency to equivocate, Marshal
Pietro Badoglio, chief of the general staff, was trying to indicate the sheer
lunacy of an assault from southern Albania through the Pindus massif without
adequate preparations. A year earlier, the general staff had ordered General
Alfredo Guzzoni to formulate a detailed plan for an invasion of Greece. Guzzoni
concluded that it would require eighteen to twenty divisions and that the
operation would take three months. Now, Mussolini was expecting nine divisions
(including one useless cavalry division) to do the same job with advance notice
of a fortnight.

Ciano pretended not to listen to the military objections. He
certainly understood the implications of what the Chief of Staff was saying.
But had he acknowledged them then he would have been obliged to relay such
serious misgivings to his father-in-law, il Duce. And Ciano never questioned
Mussolini’s political wisdom.

Mussolini’s contribution to the Axis war effort stood in
inverse proportion to the damage he visited on his own new order. His régime is
surely one of the most powerful historical arguments against autocracy,
dictatorship and the adulation of ‘strongmen’. No wartime episode demonstrates
this better than the Greco–Italian war of 1940–1, which caused tens of
thousands of unnecessary Greek and Italian casualties. In April 1939, Britain
had extended a security guarantee to Romania and Greece in the wake of
Czechoslovakia’s dismemberment. Metaxas did not discourage British protection
but he kept London at arm’s length in order to stress Greece’s essential
neutrality. Germany was now soaking up the bulk of Greek exports, and was able
to apply economic pressure. Metaxas was balanced delicately between the two
camps. Italy’s attack put an end to all that, placing Greece unequivocally on
the side of the Allies. In theory, Metaxas might now place Greek territory at
the disposal of British armed forces.

Metaxas was deeply troubled by the realization that Greece
was at war with Italy. He had received much of his military training in
Germany, and nurtured fond memories too of many years spent in Siena. To be
sure, Metaxas was pragmatic; he saw Germany and Italy as greater threats to
Greece’s independence than Britain. But his dictatorship resembled other
Mediterranean régimes. The last thing he wanted was for Greece to be at war
with anyone. Despite this, he showed great resolve, convinced that, as his wife
recalled, ‘they [the Italians] can come, we are ready. We will defeat them.’

Metaxas’s road to power had been smoothed by the
self-destructive actions of the pro-Venizelos officers in the Greek military
during the first half of the decade. The National Schism, the battle between
monarchists and republicans which was fought out primarily and catastrophically
within the army, had negated all attempts to establish a coherent democracy
during the interwar years. While in private Metaxas, a monarchist, had been
inclined for a long time towards dictatorship, it did not follow that the
republican, Venizelist forces were therefore principled supporters of
democracy.

Indeed, as Venizelos neared his death, his contempt for the
democratic process deepened. The republican officers made a final attempt to
secure a monopoly on power in March 1935 when they mounted a disorganized coup,
which quickly collapsed. The monarchists then exploited the widespread popular
disaffection with Venizelos by holding a referendum on the monarchy. King
George II (1922–4, 1935–47) returned in triumph. After an interim period,
Metaxas proclaimed himself Prime Minister in August 1936 and assumed
dictatorial powers, all in alliance with the King, who retained a considerable,
if discreet influence on the military strongman.

The centrepiece of Metaxas’s attempt to build popular
legitimacy on corporatist lines was the National Youth Organization (EON),
whose members took centre stage in many large parades glorifying Metaxas’s role
as ‘the first peasant’, ‘the first worker’, and so on. Squat, with a round face
and circular glasses, Metaxas was probably the least charismatic of all Balkan
dictators. He employed a brutish chief of the secret police and kept his
opponents in shocking conditions on island prisons. But in contrast to many of
his peers, he stopped short of murder and systematic torture.

The August 4th Régime was careful to soothe the peasantry by
lowering its excessive tax burden. The key to the stability of Metaxas’s
régime, however, lay with the military. When Metaxas took over, the
overwhelming majority of the 5,000 officers were at least passively
pro-monarchist. Like most other European leaders from the mid-1930s onwards, Metaxas
identified his primary task as the overhaul and modernization of the armed
forces. This gave him a distinct advantage in suppressing the resurgence of
republican sentiment in the military. Soldiers were given new guns and
accelerated promotion.

Greece was anti-revisionist. The national catastrophe of
1923 had actually led to the collapse of the Megali idea, of a Greater Greece.
None of the major political forces wished Greece to make significant claims
against any neighbour and in the interwar period Greece had established good
political relations with its old enemy, Turkey. The threat of Bulgarian
revisionism in western Thrace and Macedonia led Greece into the Balkan Pact
and, at the beginning of the Second World War, all Greek leaders recognized Bulgaria
as the major threat to their country’s security (although they remained wary of
Yugoslav intentions regarding Salonika). But Metaxas began planning for a
possible Italian invasion from Albania soon after he assumed power. If for
nothing else, Metaxas deserves credit for this foresight.

The mountains of Epirus (Chamuria, as the Albanians know it)
are carved into spectacular, craggy canyons that appear unexpectedly in the
walls of stone. They are crisscrossed with small rivers which usually pose only
a minor obstacle to the serious walker. But as often happens in autumn and
spring, the mountains in the early morning of 28 October were covered in grey,
threatening clouds. As Italian troops entered the first passes of the mountain
range, these clouds released a torrent of rain. Italian bomber command was
forced to ground all its planes, denying the military the use of the one arm in
which they enjoyed a clear superiority over the Greeks. The Italians moved
forwards in appalling visibility as the earth turned to thick mud. Within hours
the little streams became unfordable rapids. The Italian force was divided into
two main sections. The first, comprising some 55,000 men, was to drive down
through Epirus. The second army group of 30,000 men was to strike out from
Korçe south-east into Macedonia before moving westwards to link up with the
larger force. This would then cut Greece in two, leaving Thessaloniki hanging
ready ‘to drop into Mussolini’s hands like a ripe fruit’. That, at least, was
the general idea; but on Day 2 the navy had to call off its planned occupation
of Corfu because of rough seas.

The troops on the Epirot front became bogged down even
before they had encountered the enemy, and in the first two days several
thousand men became hopelessly lost. Spearheading the assault was the Alpine
Julia division, comprising 10,800 men and twenty guns. The advance units pushed
forward doggedly after crossing the river Sarandaporos, which had burst its
banks. They struggled on as far as the pretty hillside village of Konitsa. The
Greeks had gained enough time to organize a robust welcome. The Julia Division
withdrew under fire, but in good order. Unlike il Duce and Ciano, who were
celebrating in Rome, the soldiers of this crack unit already knew that the invasion
was a débâcle.

Back inside Albania, supply lines broke down. A special
envoy for the War Ministry reported on the eve of war that 1,750 lorries would
be required for the invasion force. Three weeks later, the operational
commander, General Count Sebastiano Visconti Prasca, complained that ‘only 107
lorries had been landed in Albania’. The majority of these had fallen foul of
Albania’s dirt tracks. Small wonder that Visconti Prasca was so impatient.
After all, this aristocratic general had incautiously promised Mussolini that
he would deliver a ‘colpo di mano in grande’ in northern Greece from which the
enemy would not recover. This, he argued, would leave open the road to Athens;
within a matter of weeks, the Italian flag would fly over the Acropolis. In fact,
within ten days, Visconti Prasca had absolutely no idea what was happening to
his troops over the border. This did not dissuade him from sending messages
back to Rome claiming they were advancing rapidly on a wide front. Inspired by
such mendacity, Ciano, a qualified pilot, dropped in on Tirana to make his
contribution to the war effort. ‘The sun has finally come out’, the Foreign
Minister enthused in his diary entry for 1 November. ‘I take advantage of it to
carry out a spectacular bombardment of Salonika. On my return I am attacked by
Greek planes. All goes well. Two of theirs fell, but I must confess that it is
the first time that I had them on my tail. It is an ugly sensation.’ Ciano’s
raid destroyed the building next to the hall where the Italians of Thessaloniki
were being mustered, pending their deportation.

Visconti Prasca could dissemble no longer as news filtered
through that the Italian forward divisions were dispersed, lost and suffering
severe casualties. Having allowed the Italians to stretch their supply lines,
the Greek army had co-opted the enthusiastic local villagers to help transport
their weaponry and supplies across the difficult terrain. The men took up arms,
creating their own units or joining the main army. The women volunteered to act
as bearers, scaling mountains with cannon parts and ammunition roped to their
back. ‘We tie thick ropes around their waists’, explained Warrant Officer
Simetzis, ‘and policemen standing on higher levels pull them
up . . . And these women, heavily loaded as they are, climb up
like goats, now clinging to a rock, now grasping at stray roots, buckling under
the weight of their load and always in danger of falling into the precipice
which opens below them. They climb up and down continuously and often throw
rocks at the enemy below who have advanced as far as the huts of
Tservatiotika.’

The Italians dodging the rocks thrown by the mountain women
were from the Julia Division, the toughest group of soldiers on the front line.
After five days, with no supplies forthcoming, their advance units were living
on dry biscuits. Sensing the enemy’s weakness, the Greek Commander General
Papagos wheeled round on the right flank, pushing back the division covering
the Julia’s left flank and cutting their communications completely. Within a
fortnight, the Italian army was in general retreat. A week later, Papagos was
able to lead his troops into Korçe, the main town in south-eastern Albania, and
a week after that the Italians were driven from Pogradec in central-eastern
Albania. The Greeks knew that if they were to push the Italians back into the
sea this would snap their own supply lines and so instead they decided to keep
the enemy tied up in central Albania. A third of the country was now under
Greek control.

That winter, Mussolini could not contain his delight when it
snowed in Rome. In a jovial mood that Christmas Eve, he told Ciano: ‘This snow
and cold are very good.’ Perhaps inspired by the central heating in the Palazzo
Venezia, Mussolini warmed to his theme. ‘In this way our good-for-nothing men
and this mediocre race will be improved. One of the principal reasons I have
desired the reforestation of the Apennines has been to make Italy colder and
more snowy.’ As he spoke, thousands of Italians across the Otranto straits were
putting his theory about climate and the Mediterranean character to the test,
as the Italian writer, Mario Cervi, has documented:

Frostbite worked havoc among the men of the Ninth Army, who
spent months at the highest altitudes, sleeping in the open without proper
winter clothing, often living in undrained trenches amid the mud and
snow . . . Among these long-suffering troops, fighting for
reasons unknown to them an enemy they did not hate, the dreaded ‘dry gangrene’
or ‘white death’ started insidiously to spread. Its onset was painless. Legs
swelled above the ankle, all feeling disappeared from the foot, the flesh
changed colour, turned purple and then blackish. Then there was the agonizing
journey to overcrowded field hospitals of men who often had to be carried
bodily by their comrades because of the lack of stretchers, and were then
loaded on to lorries that caused agony at every jolt on the appalling roads to
Valona or Durazzo or Tirana, where they awaited transport to Apulia.

About Me

Mitch Williamson is a technical writer with an
interest in military and naval affairs. He has published articles in
Cross & Cockade International and Wartime magazines. He was
research associate for the Bio-history Cross in the Sky, a book about
Charles 'Moth' Eaton's career, in collaboration with the flier's son,
Dr Charles S. Eaton. He also assisted in picture research for John
Burton's Fortnight of Infamy.
Mitch is now publishing on the WWW various specialist websites combined
with custom website design work.